The helicopter trip, which lasted less than ten minutes, was part of a new relocation technique for moving rhinos from poaching-prone areas and releasing them into more secure reserves. Airlifting in particular allows darted rhinos to be quickly removed from otherwise inaccessible terrain.

"It is just an amazing sight," project leader Jacques Flamand said of the airborne beasts. "Each one is spectacular and one wonders at it," he said via email.

"It is also so simple a concept that we are all kicking ourselves that we didn't do it long ago."

The rhinos were asleep during their flights, which took the animals between about 1,600 and 3,200 feet (500 and 1000 meters) into the air.

In the past, rhinos have been transported by trucks over poor roads or airlifted in nets, WWF's Flamand said in a statement.

"This new procedure is gentler on the darted rhino, because it shortens the time it has to be kept asleep with drugs, [its] respiration is not as compromised as it can be in a net, and it avoids the need to travel in a crate over terrible tracks," he said.

The airlifted rhinoceroses, including the animal seen above, were relocated to a secure reserve in Limpopo Province.

While the name of the reserve is being kept unknown to the public, the project partners that receive rhinos on their land are "only chosen if their security systems are of a high standard," Flamand said in a statement.

A female black rhinoceros is seen at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in an undated picture.

Except for females with offspring, black rhinos tend to be solitary creatures. Females reproduce every two and a half to five years, and each calf starts living on its own when it's about three years old.

Thanks to conservation efforts, black rhino numbers have been steadily increasing. The last continent-wide estimate made in 2007 suggested there are more than 4,000 of the animals in the wild, according to the IUCN.